Around the Towson Court House, Judge Dana Levitz has carved out a reputation as a tough, fair-minded jurist, a big man with a bigger voice.Few know of his second career: travel consultant.Next month, Judge Levitz and his wife, Dale, will lead a group of 44 judges, lawyers and others with ties to the legal community on a one-day theater excursion to Manhattan. Over four years, the couple has played host to about a half-dozen such trips, including a week-long cruise.For each itinerary, Judge Levitz and his wife pick trip dates.

THOUGH Congress and the president want to make it harder for consumers to wipe out their debts through bankruptcy, some lawyers and judges are taking a different approach: They are trying to make sure that people never get into financial straits in the first place. They are doing so by reaching out to those on the verge of getting their first credit cards - high school juniors and seniors and college freshmen. Lawyers and judges around the country visit classrooms and tell students tales from the bankruptcy court front.

ROME - Rarely do people rush to the defense of divorce lawyers, but Italians did yesterday, the day after Pope John Paul II called on Catholic lawyers and judges to abstain from handling divorce cases. Newspapers and commentators across Italy criticized the pontiff for telling an audience of attorneys that they "must avoid personal involvement in what could be seen as cooperation with divorce." An editorial in Corriere della Sera, Italy's most respected newspaper, characterized the pope's views as fundamentalist.

MOSUL, Iraq - For one New Jersey judge, Iraq may be his greatest trial. Donald F. Campbell, who usually presides over custody and murder cases in Toms River, N.J., now has the task of resurrecting the system of courts, jails and prisons for this nation of 24 million people. Campbell, who holds the rank of major general in the Army Reserve, has engaged in nation-building projects in places such as Vietnam and Haiti. But he has never attempted anything like this. "This is something I've been doing for a long time," he says, "but it is on a much bigger scale."

The Howard County Women's Bar Association is dispatching female lawyers and judges to middle school classrooms to speak with pupils about the legal profession and answer such questions as "Why does Judge Judy act the way she does?""We're getting them to think about different aspects of the law," said Ria Rothvarg, chairwoman of the Law Day committee of the Women's Bar Association.Since 1996, female lawyers and judges have been speaking to Howard County middle schoolers. Rothvarg said they are trying to reach eighth-graders who are learning about the U.S. Constitution and just beginning to think about careers.

The Commission on Judicial Disabilities took the rare step yesterday of reprimanding Baltimore Circuit Judge Kenneth Lavon Johnson for putting a lawyer in handcuffs after he tried to speak for his client last year.Johnson, 60, agreed to the private reprimand, according to a statement released by the commission yesterday. He also agreed that it be made public, said Steven P. Lemmey, investigative counsel for the commission.The judge, who took the day off yesterday, did not respond to telephone messages left at his home seeking comment.

The crime was make-believe and the proceedings were rushed and incomplete, but for the six Russian judicial officials sitting in a Howard County jury box yesterday, the mock trial still offered an enlightening glimpse at the future. This bit of theater - complete with lawyerly posturing and pacing, attacks on credibility and a judge who managed to stay above the fray - was intended to give the Russians a chance to observe the workings of an American trial by jury as they prepare to launch their own jury system.

Where does a trial judge or a defense lawyer turn when the unexpected occurs during a murder trial?Say, the defendant, a beloved Heisman Trophy winner, is writing a best-selling book from his prison cell?Starting today, participants in celebrated cases have a place to go: the High-Profile Trial Mentor Team.Few teams have a more impressive lineup. Members include lawyers and judges from some of the most intensely covered criminal trials in U.S. history -- those of Manuel Noriega, Susan Smith, Jeffrey Dahmer and O. J. Simpson.

THOUGH Congress and the president want to make it harder for consumers to wipe out their debts through bankruptcy, some lawyers and judges are taking a different approach: They are trying to make sure that people never get into financial straits in the first place. They are doing so by reaching out to those on the verge of getting their first credit cards - high school juniors and seniors and college freshmen. Lawyers and judges around the country visit classrooms and tell students tales from the bankruptcy court front.

It's far from your ordinary courtroom.For starters, it has no roof. Judges, lawyers and litigants gather under a large tent, a la Ringling Bros.Its location is improbable, on the fringes of the bustling state fair grounds in Timonium. During a trial, testimony might be interrupted by a carnival barker or drowned out by a bellowing cow.Then there are the jurors. They wear ball caps and sunglasses if they like. They wander in and out as they please. They operate under the most liberal dress policy of any court in America.

The crime was make-believe and the proceedings were rushed and incomplete, but for the six Russian judicial officials sitting in a Howard County jury box yesterday, the mock trial still offered an enlightening glimpse at the future. This bit of theater - complete with lawyerly posturing and pacing, attacks on credibility and a judge who managed to stay above the fray - was intended to give the Russians a chance to observe the workings of an American trial by jury as they prepare to launch their own jury system.

The crime was make-believe and the proceedings were rushed and incomplete, but for the six Russian judicial officials sitting in a Howard County jury box yesterday, the mock trial still offered an enlightening glimpse at the future. This bit of theater -- complete with lawyerly posturing and pacing, attacks on credibility and a judge who managed to stay above the fray -- was intended to give the Russians a chance to observe the workings of an American trial by jury as they prepare to launch their own jury system.

ROME - Rarely do people rush to the defense of divorce lawyers, but Italians did yesterday, the day after Pope John Paul II called on Catholic lawyers and judges to abstain from handling divorce cases. Newspapers and commentators across Italy criticized the pontiff for telling an audience of attorneys that they "must avoid personal involvement in what could be seen as cooperation with divorce." An editorial in Corriere della Sera, Italy's most respected newspaper, characterized the pope's views as fundamentalist.

You're a lawyer with a tremendous legal headache - you've got clients who don't want their case to drag on for years and run up tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees. Whom do you call? Lawyers and judges in Maryland would give you the telephone number of a man they say is one of the state's smartest peacemakers: retired Judge Howard S. Chasanow. "You can't stump him," said one of his oldest friends, Prince George's Circuit Judge Joseph S. Casula. Chasanow, a retired Court of Appeals judge, has found a new career as a mediator, who is called upon to settle complicated legal disputes before they get to trial.

The Howard County Women's Bar Association is dispatching female lawyers and judges to middle school classrooms to speak with pupils about the legal profession and answer such questions as "Why does Judge Judy act the way she does?""We're getting them to think about different aspects of the law," said Ria Rothvarg, chairwoman of the Law Day committee of the Women's Bar Association.Since 1996, female lawyers and judges have been speaking to Howard County middle schoolers. Rothvarg said they are trying to reach eighth-graders who are learning about the U.S. Constitution and just beginning to think about careers.

In Baltimore's halls of justice, punishment often comes before a trial.Suspects wait behind bars for months, sometimes years, for their cases to reach juries. Indigent defendants have been denied the right to lawyers. One man openly pleaded for a trial, only to be told by judges he had to stay in jail and wait some more.In the past year, a series of people suspected of commiting serious crimes, even murder, have been released because of bungling by court officials and prosecutors who were simply unable to get together and try them.

Although the administrative judge for the Baltimore Circuit Court called Judge Thomas Ward's remarks "unnecessary and inappropriate," Ward says he doesn't regret comments he made about defense attorneys that led to the dismissal of potential jurors in a murder case."

The crime was make-believe and the proceedings were rushed and incomplete, but for the six Russian judicial officials sitting in a Howard County jury box yesterday, the mock trial still offered an enlightening glimpse at the future. This bit of theater -- complete with lawyerly posturing and pacing, attacks on credibility and a judge who managed to stay above the fray -- was intended to give the Russians a chance to observe the workings of an American trial by jury as they prepare to launch their own jury system.

In Baltimore, punishment for criminal defendants sometimes comes before their cases are tried. That's not justice, Baltimore's chief judge said yesterday.Yet it is so common and so long-standing, people in the system have special names for the way suspected criminals spend weeks or months in jail only to come into court and see their cases dropped or be sentenced to jail time they have served.The police call it "abatement by arrest." BaltimoreCircuit Administrative Judge Joseph H. H. Kaplan calls it "summary judgment."